Highlights of the Linux Mint Operating System

Linux Mint is similar to Ubuntu Linux. But it's a lot easier to use is you are a first time user.

Here's a peek at what it offers.

The most helpful thing about Mint is the menu. with the search function, it's easy to find a program on your PC. Here we've just started to type "browser" and we can find the installed web browsers. Opera doesn't come as part of Mint, but was installed separately.

In the lower right hand corner of the screen are helpful icons. Here are CPU speed, firewall indicator, a checkmark showing the system is up to date on updates, network connection, display settings, audio settings, power settings, a program to force an application to shutdown if it's not working right, CPU temperature, local weather, and clock. You can right click in this area and select icons you want to be there.

"Play on Linux" is probably your best way to install Windows programs in Linux. iTunes, in particular, if very problematic to get working right. But, using the latest version of iTunes,  and "Play on Linux" (instead of Wine), it was working. Also, programs like Yahoo Messenger can be installed.

Here's the software manager, You can click on a category to see what applications are available to download.

Or, you can type in a word, like "radio" to see what is available. The little green check mark means it is already installed on your system. The more popular apps will have ratings that you can click on to read. The cool thing is that there is tons of great free software available. If anyone in your family is interested in the sciences, there is a lot of good software about subjects like astronomy and chemistry.

If you have an older PC that doesn't run Windows well, it will likely be OK for Linux. Here, the System Monitor shows only 351.9 MB (of 3 GB) of memory being used. This is with the Firefox browser running.

This is just a basic look, to show you that Mint is easy to use. The real fun is that you have a very secure system, with almost no worries about malware. Just keep an eye on that little indicator that shows if any updates are available. If there are, download them right away. Then you should have a system that is at least as secure as a Windows system. And Mint is free!